But there are other ways to organize organizations. And we’re learning more about them every day.

Evolving Excellence writes about Sun Hydraulics, a company that’s organized in an extraordinary way:

“Their culture is really something to see. A $170 million public company that manufactures high end hydraulic manifolds and valves, profitable since it was started in 1970, [with] six plants around the world employing roughly a thousand people.

“What’s unusual about that? How about this:

There is no organization chart

There are no job titles or job descriptions

No performance criteria

No bonuses and no perks

No regularly scheduled meetings

No approval levels for capital or expense spending

No goals

No offices or high-walled cubicles

If the peers accept the idea, then “management” is presumed to accept it — hence the need for very little management

Every employee is simply expected to figure out where they fit

“There is one honorary job title: Plant Manager. But it’s not what you think. This facility, what amounts to a very large machine shop filled with heavy 5-axis CNC’s, has hundreds of live plants hanging from the ceiling. The Plant Manager is the person in charge of maintaining the plants.”

Read the rest of the post on Evolving Excellence for some hints on how they organize under these conditions. More extraordinary organizations coming up.

My concern with spaghetti organisations is that you’re potentially employing (or attempting to employ, and completely dependent on) people who’ll quickly come to believe they’re capable of running their own company, or, at the very least, quickly outgrowing the space available in your company. Web start-ups would probably be more vulnerable to this, though; I’m sure the market place for hydraulic cartridge valves has high(ish) barriers to entry.